Red Braised Chicken Rice is my riff on the much-loved Chinese classic red braised pork. Chicken is perfect when you’re short of time and you want to cook a delicious one-pan meal. The best part is it doesn’t require many ingredients, just chicken thighs and rice and the usual Asian pantry staples and it can easily be scaled up to feed a big crowd.
Tips to make your Red Braised Chicken Rice perfect
Use skinless, chicken thighs. Both bone-in and boneless thighs work here. I don’t recommend using chicken breasts because thighs add a lot more of that gorgeously savoury chicken flavours to the rice.
The rice in this recipe is Ronga Bora Saul , the red variety of the Assamese glutinous rice, Bora Saul. Any kind of short-grain glutinous rice will do the trick.
The hit of umami (apart from the colour) in this Red Braised Chicken Rice comes from the light and dark soy sauces. So it’s important to balance their quantity. Don’t be tempted to eyeball it and add generous splashes. You’ll end up with an inedible, overly salty dish. Soy sauces should always be used judiciously else they can ruin your dish.
Ginger and Shaoxing cooking wine is the other flavour builders in this recipe. Try to use the freshest, brightest ginger. It makes all the difference. It adds a hint of heat while the Shaoxing infuses a little sweet fermented taste that’s delicious and not overpowering at all.
While the rice and chicken are cooking, do not be tempted to open the lid. Ensuring that it stays on for the entire 20-minute duration of cooking, builds pressure and a steam chamber in the pan. So the rice on top cooks up to a pleasantly chewy texture while the bottom layer develops this dark crust which adds a nice crunch to this soft dish. The pictures show just how darkly tempting and juicy this is.
And that’s all she wrote. Make Red Braised Chicken Rice; it tastes so much more rewarding than the effort taken to cook it.
Red Braised Chicken Rice
Ingredients
- 150 g sushi rice or any short-grained, starchy rice, washed and soaked for 30 mins
- 6 skinless chicken thighs bone-in or boneless
- 1 tbsp ginger, finely minced
- 1 tsp garlic, minced
- 1¼ tbsp light soy sauce
- ½ tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
- 2 tbsp peanut oil
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 spring onion, chopped
For the marinade
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- ½ tsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- ½ tsp toasted sesame oil
Instructions
- Put the chicken thighs in a bowl, add the ingredients for the marinade, mix well and set aside for 30 mins.
- Heat a pan on medium flame and add 1 tbsp oil and when the oil is quite hot, add the sugar. It'll melt. spread it around the pan and don't allow it to burn.
- Arrange the chicken pieces in a single layer in the pan and sear for 2-3 minutes on each side. The chicken should be nicely charred and red/dark brown from the caramelised sugar. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Drain the soaked rice. Lower the flame, add the remaining 1 tbsp oil and toss in the white parts of the spring onion, ginger and garlic. Sauté for a few seconds.
- Now add the rice and fry for 5 min. Then add in the soy sauces and Shaoxing wine and stir to coat the rice grains. Spread the rice in an even layer nestling the chicken thighs in.
- Pour in just enough water to just cover the rice, put on the lid and turn the flame to high for a min. Then reduce the flame and let the chicken and rice simmer for 20 min.
- After 20 mins, remove the lid, sprinkle with the green parts of the spring onion and serve.
No Comments